This invention relates generally to an electronic chassis for free-standing rack mounted use that enable cooling of electronic components housed inside the chassis.
Computer and storage networks have become highly prevalent as the need to share expensive computing assets such as storage devices has increased. Today, large local area network (xe2x80x9cLANxe2x80x9d) systems and storage area networks (xe2x80x9cSANxe2x80x9d) are commonplace in many businesses.
As can be appreciated, businesses that use networks such as SANs are highly dependent upon these systems for round-the-clock availability. Therefore, manufacturers of such systems need to take great care in addressing issues relating to reliability. One of those issues is thermal management of the heat developed in LAN and SAN equipment. Large LAN and SAN networks often have a chassis for each subsystem of the network that is capable of supporting a large number of plug-in cards to accommodate the maximum design capacity of the system. Therefore, cooling systems designed to provide appropriate thermal management for the electronics within those chassis must be able to handle the worst-case thermal load. However, quite often a company may not utilize the full capacity of a particular subsystem and therefore that subsystem may not be fully populated with plug-in cards. As such, the thermal load for that particular subsystem may be substantially less than the maximum thermal load the cooling system for that subsystem is designed to accommodate.
In subsystems that support a large number of plug-in cards but are only partially populated with plug-in cards, the fans or blowers may still be running as if all of the plug-in cards were present. As a result, the cooling capacity may be greater than necessary. This excess capacity results in unnecessary power consumption, increased acoustical noise level, and may reduce the expected service life of the associated fans or blowers.
Therefore, what is needed is an apparatus and method that provides sufficient cooling for subsystem that may be responsive to actual subsystem conditions.